Princeton University Humanities Council

Frankenstein, Ethics, and Teaching Across the Disciplines
2019-03-27 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 010 East Pyne
Panel discussion as part of the Frankenstein @ 200 celebrations.
“Teaching Frankenstein and Race.” John Bugg, Fordham University, teaching award winner at Fordham and Princeton PhD
“Frankenstein in the History of Happiness: From Ancient Ethics to Richard Wright.” Adam Potkay, College of William and Mary; Laurence Rockefeller Teaching Professor at Center for Human Values

Virtual Reality and the Feeling of Virtue: Women of Color Narrators, Enforced Hospitality, and the Leveraging of Empathy
2019-03-27 16:30 - 18:00 | 100 Jones, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
This lecture analyzes women of color’s labor as virtual reality’s documentary subjects whose digital presence and hospitality within war-torn, emiserated, and inhospitable scenes such as a Lebanese refugee camp, a favela, and a cucumber farm enables a fantasy of virtuous empathy on the part of the viewer.
Lisa Nakamura, Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will deliver the fourth talk in the 2018-19 Thinking Cinema series.

Mellon Forum: Indigenous Resistance and Anti-Colonial Critique of Environmental Justice
2019-03-27 12:00 - 13:15 | School of Architecture, South Gallery, School of Architecture, South Gallery, Princeton, NJ, 08544
This presentation examines the critical interplay among settler colonialism, Indigenous resurgence, and the politics of climate justice. In the wake of a planet-wide movement riddled with idioms about “saving our home,” where the ground is fast-shifting and the fate of humanity’s collective future is at stake, there has been a tidal wave of interest in Indigenous knowledge(s) about the land, water, and sky—a desire to “capture and store” the intergenerational wisdom that speaks to the unpredictable path lying ahead. Still, limited attempts have been made to theorize how conquest and persistent settler colonial violence necessarily factor into debates over the environmental crisis—this, despite the creation of territories of material and psychic abandonment largely fueled by settlers and “settlement.”

Book Talk: War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Idea in Western and Islamic Thought
2019-03-26 18:00 | Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ, 08542, United States
Author Murad Idris (University of Virginia) is joined by Andrew Cole (English) and Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Classics) to discuss the book.

M+M: Liz Diller: On "The Mile-Long Opera: A Biography of 7 o'clock"
2019-03-26 17:00 - 19:00 | N107 School of Architecture
The Mile-Long Opera, a citywide public engagement project, brought together 1,000 singers from across New York for free performances on the High Line, October 3—8, 2018.
Co-created by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, with words and lyrics by acclaimed poets Anne Carson and Claudia Rankine, The Mile-Long Opera: a biography of 7 o’clock is an ambitious, collective, free choral work that shares personal stories from hundreds of New Yorkers about life in a rapidly changing city.

Brown Matter, Noisy Flesh
2019-03-26 16:30 - 18:00 | 106 McCormick, NJ, United States
Intersections Working Group presents “Brown Matter, Noisy Flesh,” a conversation with Professor Amber Jamilla Musser, Associate Professor of American Studies, George Washington University, and Artist Xandra Ibarra.

From Grand Ambitions to Failure: America's Mideast Wars Since 2001
2019-03-26 16:30 - 18:00 | 219 Aaron Burr, Princeton, 08544, United States
Third installment in The Near East & the World Seminar Series: American Foreign Policy and the Middle East.

Migration, Journalism, and the Question of Representation: Panel Discussion
2019-03-26 16:30 - 18:00 | A71 Simpson International Building
Panel Discussion: Princeton student journalists, with faculty
Joe Stephens, Ferris Professor Journalism, and Director, Program in Journalism
Deborah Amos, Ferris Professor of Journalism
Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Series, Session IX: Migration, Journalism, and the Question of Representation
“Global Migration: The Humanities and Social Sciences in Dialogue” is funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

From Chaos to Chaos: Janus’ Speech in Fasti 1 and the Gates of War
2019-03-26 04:30 - 18:00 | 010 East Pyne

A Reading with Anne Waldman
2019-03-25 17:00 - 18:00 | Hinds Library, McCosh, Hinds Library, McCosh, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
This event is part of a two-day visit, which includes also a Rare Books & Special Collections visit and a Pied Oxen Letterpress workshop.

Octagonal Churches and Their Functions in Late Antiquity
2019-03-25 16:30 - 18:00 | 106 McCormick Hall, 106 McCormick Hall, Princeton, NJ, United States
Co-sponsored by the Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity and the Department of Art and Archaeology

Fugitive Mirror
2019-03-25 16:30 - 18:00 | 010 East Pyne, 010 East Pyne, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Focused on works by Robert Smithson, Giotto, and Mantegna, the video project Fugitive Mirror explores artworks as interruptions in the flow of animate and inanimate matter. Under the provisional conditions of the artistic intervention, death appears inside of life, and life inside of death.
This will be lecture followed by a roundtable discussion.
Respondents: Beatrice Kitzinger (Art and Archaeology) and Spyros Papapetros (Architecture)

Carl G. Hempel Lectures: Ideology in Practice
2019-03-25 16:00 - 18:00 | 101 McCormick, 101 McCormick Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
The Philosophy Department presents the 2019 Carl G. Hempel Lectures with Sally Haslanger (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The general title of Professor Haslanger’s lecture series is “Ideology, Critique, and Conceptual Amelioration.” The Philosophy Department has been presenting this annual three lecture series in honor of Carl Gustav Hempel (a member of the Princeton University Philosophy Department, 1955-73) since 1989.
Second lecture, March 28: “Conceptual Amelioration: Going On, Not in the Same Way”
Third lecture, March 29: “Critical Standpoints and the Epistemology of Injustice”

Rare Books & Special Collections Discussion with Anne Waldman
2019-03-25 14:00 - 16:00 | Firestone Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08550, United States
Anne Waldman, a prolific and active poet and performer many years, will be holding a discussion moderated by Professor Joshua Kotin (English) in Rare Books & Special Collections in Firestone Library.
This event is part of a two-day visit, which includes also a reading on Monday, March 25 and a Pied Oxen Letterpress workshop on Tuesday, March 26.
To register, visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/anne-waldman

Person Place Thing: Live Interview with Elaine Pagels
2019-03-18 18:00 - 20:00 | Princeton Public Library
Randy Cohen interviews author and Princeton University Professor of Religion Elaine Pagels in this live recording of his public radio program, “Person Place Thing,” during which guests are asked to speak about a person, a place and a thing they find meaningful rather than about themselves.
Randy Cohen won multiple Emmy awards as a writer for “Late Night with David Letterman” and for 12 years wrote “The Ethicist” column for The New York Times Magazine.

Conference on Comparative Ancient Philosophy
2019-03-18 | 301 Marx, 301 Marx, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
This two-day conference invites scholars to discuss, compare, and contrast pre-modern philosophy from different cultures across the world and time, without enforcing assumptions about what counts as “philosophy.” The speakers belong to various departments (not just Philosophy) and collectively have expertise in Africana, Islamic, Aztec/Nahua, Chinese, Christian, Greek, Indian, Islamic, and Maya philosophy and thought. The theme of the conference is “Values in Antiquity,” which is deliberately broad enough to include ethics, social philosophy, political theory, aesthetics, theology, and the philosophy of religion. With such wide-ranging topics and areas of expertise, the presentations and discussion should be very informative for all participants, both in terms of philosophical and historical content and in how to put these different traditions into dialogue with one another.
For full schedule, visit the CCAP site.

Workshop on Contemporary Russian Poetry
2019-03-16 16:00 - 18:00 | 010 East Pyne
Public bilingual reading of poetry
Poets:
Polina Barskova
Dmitry Kuzmin
Elena Mikhailik
Galina Rymbu
Leonid Schwab
Keti Chukhrov
Co-sponsored by the Humanities Council, Bain-Swiggett Fund, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (REES)

Excavations at a Forgotten Female Pharaoh's "Temple of Millions of Years"
2019-03-15 16:30 - 18:00 | 106 McCormick
Program in Archaeology event

Habitually Unsettled: Opera Studies and Opera Staging Today
2019-03-15 13:00 - 14:30 | 209 Scheide Caldwell House
A workshop organized by the ECS Graduate Affiliate Working Group on Contemporary Approaches to Opera Studies.
Lunch will be served.
Send RSVPs to Sean Toland (stoland@princeton.edu).

I Racconti Delle Nebbie
2019-03-14 19:00 - 21:00 | Wilson Black Box Theater
An Evening of Songs and Storytelling.

Changes in Manet's Paintings
2019-03-14 17:30 - 18:30 | Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Juliet Wilson-Bareau, an independent Édouard Manet scholar, and Bart J. C. Devolder, the Art Museum’s conservator, discuss two works by Manet currently on view in the Museum: Gypsy with a Cigarette and Young Woman in a Round Hat.
A reception will follow.

Black Feminisms Across the Americas: A Tribute to Political Activist Marielle Franco
2019-03-14 17:00 - 19:00 | 10 McCosh
Conference hosted by Brazil Lab in 399 Julis Rabinowitz from 1.45 PM to 6:30 PM
Keynote by Angela Davis in 10 McCosh at 5-7 PM

The Holocaust and the Nakba
2019-03-14 16:30 - 18:00 | 010 East Pyne
A panel discussion surrounding the recent release of the new volume The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History (eds. Bashir Bashir and Amos Goldberg, Columbia UP, 2019)

The Feminist Porn Wars: A Retrospective
2019-03-14 16:30 - 18:00 | 101 McCormick, 101 McCormick Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
The annual Meredith Miller Memorial Lecture. Reception to follow in Prospect House.
Gayle Rubin received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1994 and has been teaching at the University of Michigan since 2003. She is the author of a series of groundbreaking articles on the politics of sex and gender (collected in Deviations, 2012) and an anthropological study of gay leathermen in San Francisco (entitled Valley of the Kings, forthcoming). Her teaching includes classes on “Sex Panics,” “Sex and the City,” and graduate seminars such as “Sexological Theories: From Krafft-Ebbing to Foucault” and “The Feminist Sex Wars.”

The Yiddish Columbus: Critical Counter-History and the Remapping of American Jewish Literature
2019-03-13 16:30 - 18:00 | 101 McCormick, 101 McCormick Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
This lecture explores the ways in which the myth of Columbus can be mobilized to unearth “underground” indigenous, African and Jewish histories in the New World, and suggests a new geography for American Jewish literature that exceeds the boundaries of English and the United States.
Rachel Rubinstein is professor of American literature and Jewish studies at Hampshire College.

Old English Scribbles: The Intersection of Materiality and Performativity
2019-03-13 16:30 - 18:00 | B14 McCosh
A talk by Haruko Momma, Professor of English at NYU, co-sponsored by the Theory and Medieval Colloquia in English.

Michael Flower: Seven Types of Fiction in Historical Narrative: Or, Why You Cannot Trust Herodotus or Thucydides
2019-03-13 16:30 - 18:00 | 010 East Pyne
The Humanities Council invites the campus community to join us for a new series of public lectures given by the Council’s Old Dominion Research Professors for 2018-19.
Michael Flower (David Magie ’97 Class of 1897 Professor of Classics and Old Dominion Research Professor 2018-19) will deliver the third lecture in the series entitled “Seven Types of Fiction in Historical Narrative: or Why you cannot trust Herodotus or Thucydides.”
This lecture adapts the title of T. P. Wiseman’s well-known article ‘Lying Historians: Seven Types of Mendacity’. I am consciously eschewing the words ‘lying’ and ‘mendacious’ since the ancient Greeks and Romans would not have considered the generic rules by which they wrote ‘history’ in such terms. Rather, I will argue that what we understand as ‘fictionality’ was simply the normative rules for writing narratives of contemporary and past events. This talk will explore seven narrative devices which, if they appeared in a modern academic historical work, would normally be considered ‘fictional’. But if the employment of such devices was the normative working procedure of both Thucydides and Herodotus, can we really use their narratives either to reconstruct the political history of ancient Greece or to underpin contemporary theories of interstate relations (such as the so-called “Thucydides trap”, according to which the US is on the path to war with China?).

Subjects Put to the Test. Learning Exercises in Contemporary Art
2019-03-13 16:30 - 18:00 | 106 McCormick

Postclassicisms 2018-19: Translating Antiquity
2019-03-13 12:00 - 13:20 | 161 East Pyne, 161 East Pyne, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Session 6: Conversation with Peter Burian, Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Duke University.
Lunch Talk
Please RSVP to Eileen Robinson eileenrobinson@princeton.edu

From Rehearsal to Simulation
2019-03-13 12:00 - 13:20 | 399 Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
In the wake of the “ethnographic turn” of the 1990s, much artistic research became a mix of learning exercise, theatrical rehearsal, scientific experiment, and/ or laboratory test. Our workshop will address this expanding field of artists, actors/ dancers/ performers, curators, media activists, writers, who shared an interest in experimental and performative methods of collective education. We will relate this advanced performance work, with its reliance on methods of “trial and error,” to a growing disaffection with the aesthetics and epistemologies of Western high culture in a post-disciplinary society.
Please RSVP to blleavey@princeton.edu if you plan to attend
